Glascock Poetry Contest winners announced

The Kathryn Irene Glascock Poetry Contest at Mount Holyoke College announced two winners for its centennial year: Tom Bosworth ’23 of Dartmouth College and Portlyn Houghton-Harjo ’23 of Pratt Institute.

The winners were chosen after a public reading by all six finalists on Friday, March 31, in the Gamble Auditorium on the Mount Holyoke campus. Joining the lively in-person crowd was a virtual audience for the live-streamed event, which included, as Interim President Beverly Daniel Tatum said in her welcoming remarks, “one special alum from the class of 1950!”

“The fact that Glascock has continued and thrived over the past 100 years can be attributed only to the Mount Holyoke College students, faculty and staff” who have supported the contest, Interim President Tatum said. “Poetry at Mount Holyoke has prevailed.”

The other student poet finalists were Ace Chandler FP’24 of Mount Holyoke College, Elizabeth Roa Martinez ’24 of University of Massachusetts Boston, Mason Newbury ’23 of Suffolk University and Jordan Trice ’24 of Amherst College. The guest judges this year were honored poets Hoa Nguyen, Evie Shockley and Eileen Myles.

Kathryn Irene Glascock pursued a literary career during her time at Mount Holyoke, serving as editor of the literary section of the Mount Holyoke News and later the editor in chief. Glascock was awarded the Sigma Theta Chi prize for poetry and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, among other recognitions. She graduated in 1922 and moved to New York to work at a publishing company. She died of pneumonia on February 23, 1923.

During her lifetime, Glascock’s poems were published in Vanity Fair and Poetry. A collection of her work was edited by Professor Ada Snell, then chair of the English department, and published posthumously.

The Glascock Contest is the oldest continuing running poetry contest for undergraduates in the country. The first Glascock judge was Robert Frost, and judges have included such luminaries as William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden, Louise Bogan, Adrienne Rich and Audre Lord. Noted contestants have included James Agee, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and James Merrill.

“Just imagine,” Interim President Tatum said, “how the next 100 years of Glascock will unfold.”

The annual poetry event is sponsored by the Kathryn Irene Glascock Memorial Fund, the Joyce Horner Poetry Prize, the Charles and Rosanna Batchelor Memorial fund and the Department of English at Mount Holyoke College.